Success is about much more than profits and an impressive reputation; for us, it’s about respecting the people we work with and the places in which we operate and impact.
At Carlisle, we define corporate responsibility as any action taken by the company which positively impacts our people, our customers, our suppliers and the communities around our company, and which includes and goes beyond our legal or regulatory obligations.
We are passionate about the employment industry, and wherever possible we have chosen to target initiatives central to our core area of expertise where we can bring most benefit.
Our primary focus areas:
Investing in Our People
People are our business, and at Carlisle our people really do come first. Our desire to be an employer of choice is at the top of our priorities; we aim to recruit and retain the best talent, and we act as an equal opportunities employer at all times and ensure our employees remain safe from discrimination and harassment in the workplace.
We are an Investors in People accredited employer, currently working towards achieving the IIP Gold Standard by 2013. We invest in learning and development programmes across all levels of our business; a new addition to our suite of development programmes is our talent programme ‘Progressive People’, launched in 2012 to support employees realise their full potential. Every year, we invest more than twice the national average in learning and development per employee.
Fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration is vital to the success of our business; to promote these areas and support employee engagement, we hold open forums with employees at least twice a year and we regularly canvass and act upon employee feedback about how we should improve and develop our business.
Diversity
Everyone deserves an equal chance to secure a job that is right for them. An important part of our role as a resourcing partner is to help to remove barriers to employment and to encourage our clients to embrace a diverse workforce, regardless of gender, age, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation or religion and to give everyone the same opportunity.
We are deeply committed to supporting diversity and equal opportunities in the workplace, and are proud to demonstrate this through our 'Diversity Pledge'; an initiative operated by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and Job Centre Plus which requires adherence to 5 key diversity actions:
Value and harness the differences between people
Actively seek to identify diverse candidate pools and promote their engagement
Review all aspects of the employment process to eradicate unjustifiable discrimination
Promote recruitment and selection best practice in accordance with REC standards
Work with others to challenge discrimination where we find it
We work with our clients to design initiatives and programmes that will improve and develop workforce diversity and ensure equal opportunity for all; to support our work in this area, we have developed working partnerships with organisations representing minority groups including the Shaw Trust, Remploy, Prospects and Mencap.
We continually review potential projects we can support, and in 2012 we have added two new key initiatives to our diversity programme:
We are supporting the WorkingMums Top Employers Awards, and are proud to be a key sponsor for this event where we will be speaking about flexible working.
We are currently working on an initiative with Business in the Community that we aim to launch towards the end of 2012; supporting a programme that specifically helps people with significant barriers to work get back into employment.
Supporting the Community
We believe businesses should always work for the good of the community. So we strive to go further than statutory requirements and put our skills and resources back into local and wider communities; our current initiatives in this area include working with schools across the UK, running free career workshops for their students.
Our resourcing strategy includes a strong focus on recruiting local people into local jobs - a key priority for many of our clients, and one that delivers outstanding results and brings benefit to employers and work seekers.
All our employees receive one day’s paid leave every year to take part in community initiatives. Our Community Focus team creates voluntary work programmes that our employees are encouraged to take time out of the office to participate in, to help improve the lives of local people and the environment.
Our programme of voluntary work includes a nominated charity every year; this year, we are supporting the Peace Hospice, a center of excellence offering free palliative care for people with life-limiting or terminal illnesses. So far, we have raised £5,000 for the Peace Hospice through our fundraising events.
Environmental Management
We operate an ISO14001 environmental management system across our business; all our offices have a designated ‘Environment Champion’, tasked with finding ways to reduce waste, conserve resources and limit our impact upon the environment. All our offices operate recycling systems to maximise office waste recycling.
As part of our resource conservation programme, we have implemented an on-line timesheet and pay slip system that consistently saves around 677,976 sheets or paper a year, equating to 5,831kg of CO2 and 82 trees.
To help us drive down CO2 emissions, we use a green fleet of environmentally friendly vehicles, which meet Euro4 environmental standards. Across our business, we also actively support cycling, car sharing and prioritise public transport over personal transport
Ethical Business Practice
At Carlisle, our commitment to high ethical standards underpins our business practices in all our dealings with employees, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders.
As a corporate member of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), the leading UK body for the recruitment industry, we are bound and have chosen to observe the highest principles of ethics, equity, integrity, professional conduct and fair practice in dealing with others we come into contact with during the day-to-day activities of running our business.
For us, ethical conduct is not simply compliance with legal or regulatory requirements, but extends to honesty, respect for and equitable treatment of others, integrity and social responsibility.